11 Action, activities and intentionality
1. Hubert DREYFUS and Jerome WAKEFIELD, "Intentionality and the Phenomenology of Action", John Searle and his Critics, E. Lepore & R. Van Guhck, edts., (Cambridge, UK : Basil Blackwell, 1991), 264
2. John R. SEARLE, "Response : The Background of Intentionality and Action," in John Searle and his Critics, E. Lepore & R. Van Guhck, edts , (Cambridge, UK : Basil Blackwell, 1991)
3. Hubert L Dreyfus, "Heidegger's Critique of the Husserl/Searle Account of Intentionality," Social Research Vol. 60, No. 1, (Spring 1993).
4. John Searle, “The Limits of Phenomenology”, Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume Two, MIT Press, 2000.
5. Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Phenomenological Description versus Rational Reconstruction”, La Revue Internationale de Philosophie, l999
6. John Searle, “Neither Phenomenological Description nor Rational Reconstruction”, La Revue Internationale de Philosophie l999
7. Hubert L. Dreyfus, “The Primacy of Phenomenology over Logical Analysis”, 1999
8. Hubert Dreyfus, ‘The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment’, Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy (1996),
The two contenders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle
5. Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Phenomenological Description versus Rational Reconstruction”, La Revue Internationale de Philosophie, l999
6. John Searle, “Neither Phenomenological Description nor Rational Reconstruction”, La Revue Internationale de Philosophie l999
7. Hubert L. Dreyfus, “The Primacy of Phenomenology over Logical Analysis”, 1999
8. Hubert Dreyfus, ‘The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment’, Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy (1996),
The two contenders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle
Response: The Background of Intentionality and Action
RispondiEliminaJOHN R. SEARLE
By the response of Searle to the critics arise against him from Barry Stroud, Wakefield, Dreyfus and Brian O’Shaughnessy, we can catch some useful elements to understand what he intends with “Background of Intentionality and Action”
First, he start with the assumption that we all have real intentional states such as beliefs, desires, etc.. and he want to know how they work (naturalistic approach) “What sort of structures do they have and how do their structures relate them to the world?”
These structure are mental…but Mental ≠ intentional. So In what sense can the Background be
mental if it dries not consist of intentional phenomena” he is in agreement with various philosophers who try to get at Intentionality with such notions as “methodological solipsism” (that denies the belief that everything that the individual perceives to be created by their own conscience) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodological_solipsism (it is only in this sense that he claims that the Background is mental). And in this sense the Background abilities are independent of how things are in fact in the world that individuals represent to themself with their intentionality. In short, the Background is not itself a feature of the world independent of the mind.
“The functioning of Intentionality cannot be Intentionalistic right down to the ground, but rather this functioning must presuppose a set of capacities that are not themselves representational. Indeed, this is the essential theoretical claim in my thesis of the Background. I call these capacities collectively the Background.”
The experience of acting during non-deliberate actions appears to consist simply of the experience of a steady and immediate flow of skillful activity in response to ones sense of the environment and one’s internal state ... But no intention—in—action is necessary to explain such an experience.
intention-in action is the Intentional content of the action more specifically: An intention-in action just is an Intentional event that consists in a representational content in a certain psychological mode. If the action is successfully performed, then the action will consists of two components. The intention-in-action and the bodily movement, where the bodily movement is both caused by and Intentionally presented by the intention in action.
- notions of conditions of satisfaction and Background: prior intention and intention in-action. The prior intention represents the whole action and not just the bodily movement. ( for example If I form a plan to raise own arm, I have formed a prior intention to perform a whole action)
there is a difference between the plans that one forms prior to an action (what he call the prior intention) and the actual mental component of the action itself (what he call the intention-in-action)
Dreyfus (1993). Heidegger's Critique of Husserl's (and Searle's) Account of Intentionality. Social Research. 60(1).
RispondiEliminaThe article adds accounts of Searle to the position of Husserl to explain on the concept of intentionality and compares this with what Heidegger wrote on the same topic. Due to this construction, an academic philosophical debate develops around this concept.
The big difference between Heidegger and Husserl is simply stated to be a difference between knowing and doing. While Husserl spoke of a detached, meaning-giving, knowing subject, Heidegger is told to speak about an involved, meaning-giving, doing subject. The rest of the article goes on into explaining this difference because it is not that simple. Both appear to work with different accounts of intentionality. While for Husserl, intentionality refers to mental states which are always about something, a certain directedness is assumed called 'intentional content'. Heidegger disagrees with the idea that a subject's actions or knowing towards any object reflects one's mental state.
The claim on which Husserl bases his (according to Heidegger) wrong conclusion is the assumption that a person's relation to the world and the things in it must always be mediated by intentional content. Heidegger calls it an misinterpretation, which should be lying in an erroneous subjectivizing of intentionality. And he claims that it is impossible for a subject to have intentional experiences encapsulated within oneself (something the Husserlian tradition seems to imply).
As Husserl did not cover and only implies it according to Dreyfus, the analysis of Searl is entered into the discussion stating that goals of the action are represented through continuously shaped movement and that therefore every movement is a causal connection between intention in action and the bodily movement: bodily movement is caused by reason.
Heidegger rejects this view insofar it may be a true saying for deliberate actions only in which the intention of acting may lead to the experience of acting and thus one's movement. However, Heidegger states that many actions we do, happen without consideration and heavy thinking: Many daily activities happen while we have no self-referential experience of oneself as causing that activity. For instance, when we are "absorbed" by a certain situation we do not think about other movement. Just now, I scratched my nose while I was reading a part of the text and I realised it only after my hands went on typing again. I had been so occupied with reading that I did not realise my nose was to be scratched, my hand just did so thoughtlessly.
Furthermore, actions may be without any representation of what one is trying to achieve as one is performing the action. The article gives a lot of examples.
So while Searle argues that there must be goal-awareness in any action, and that one must just ask the performing agent what he is doing, Heidegger on the other hand concludes that whatever an agent report that it is doing, one will never be sure whether this is or was the same as the conscious intention that initiated the flow of activity.
Heidegger thus comes up with his own way of being able to report what people are doing which is not based on the inspection of an internal mental state: "Comportment" (Verhalten) he calls it which is based on "Towards-whiches". It does not ask what you intend to do, but asks toward which point we one is directed in many time-range possibilities and stages, but it may not be taken as a 'goal', for it is explicitly NOT describing the goal of our activity without our intentions or expectations, without mentalistic overtones. [CONTINUES...]
...[CONTINUED]
EliminaIn the final piece, Heidegger argues that people need to know how to behave or cope with their surroundings. That they leave out a lot of details until these become important. This background familiarity consists in a continual non-intentional activity that he calls ontological transcendence which provide the conditions to make action possible. As an extra statement against Husserl and Searl, Heidegger states that this background familiarity is like a light bulb, only important for our actions when it matters. While circumstances are not important we do not consider these so we are not actively ignoring these and yet we know about our surroundings. This contradicts the split-relationship between world and mental state that Searl and Husserl propose. The self and the world are not two entities like subject and object, according to Heidegger. [END].
Jerome Wakefield and Hubert Dreyfus: Intentionality and the Phenomenology of Action
RispondiEliminaIn this passage the authors review and complete the theories of Donald Davidson’s and John Searles regarding the definition of action, the frame of the phenomenology and intention in action.
From my perspective the core of the text is built on emphasizing the difference between bodily movements caused by reasons into those that are actions and those that are not. John Searle’s notion of an „intention in action” is meant to account for these features.
According to Davidson we can not consider the reflexive raising of the leg as an action, moreover we might assume that even if „the subjects had been thirsty and their hands had been made to move toward a nearby glass of water just as they wanted it to do, the motion would still not have been experienced by the subjects as their own action”. From Davidson’s point of view in order to talk about actions first we have to determine the reason behind the bodily motion. Wakefield and Dreyfus suggests that beyond determining the reasons behind the bodily motion have to consider the importance of the phenomenological frame (puzzle) of the action.
According to the authors Davidson’s approach is not complete because of the lack of explanation about the phenomenology of action.
Counter to Davidson Wakefield's and Dreyfus's concept regarding the unthinking activites plays an important role in terms of defining the phenomena of action. Brushing the teeths, rolling over in the bed, press the door handle before entering the office are undoubtedly unthinking actions. However the authors are defining these unthinking activites actions without the representation of the goal of the action „shapes the action” „These unthinking actions seem to be at least as typical of the activities in a normal day as their opposite”. Referring to the authors this non-representational bodily movements responds for the phenomenological distinction between voluntary and non-voluntary action.
Hubert L. Dreyfus - Heidegger's Critique of Husserl's (and Searle's) Account of Intentionality
RispondiEliminaThrough this article H.L. Dreyfus goes through Heidegger's critique of Husserl's and Searle's account of intentionality.
Searley's main argument is that the experience of acting is rather distinct from the experience of being acted. According to his theory, the concept of acting itself distinguishes the initial will and the final goal. Moreover, as Heidegger tries to explain and go deeper to the term of Heidegger might well grant Husserl that his intentionalistic account reflects our
commonsense concept of action. He is not, however, trying to explicate our commonsense concept of action, but to make a place for a sort of activity that has been overlooked both by commonsense and a fortiori by the philosophical tradition. Heidegger holds that the commonsense concept of action covers up our most basic mode of involvement in the world. Heidegger therefore introduces his own term, Verhalten, (behavior) for the way human beings normally cope.
On the top of it, Heidegger uses comportment to refer to our directed activity, precisely because the term has no mentalistic overtones. But he claims that comportment, nonetheless, exhibits the logical structure of intentionality.
Christos Konstantinidis
RispondiEliminaHubert L. Dreyfus - Heidegger's Critique of Husserl's (and Searle's) Account of Intentionality
Through this article H.L. Dreyfus goes through Heidegger's critique of Husserl's and Searle's account of intentionality.
Searley's main argument is that the experience of acting is rather distinct from the experience of being acted. According to his theory, the concept of acting itself distinguishes the initial will and the final goal. Moreover, as Heidegger tries to explain and go deeper to the term of Heidegger might well grant Husserl that his intentionalistic account reflects our
commonsense concept of action. He is not, however, trying to explicate our commonsense concept of action, but to make a place for a sort of activity that has been overlooked both by commonsense and a fortiori by the philosophical tradition. Heidegger holds that the commonsense concept of action covers up our most basic mode of involvement in the world. Heidegger therefore introduces his own term, Verhalten, (behavior) for the way human beings normally cope.
On the top of it, Heidegger uses comportment to refer to our directed activity, precisely because the term has no mentalistic overtones. But he claims that comportment, nonetheless, exhibits the logical structure of intentionality.
John R. SEARLE, "Response : The Background of Intentionality and Action," in John Searle and his Critics, E. Lepore & R. Van Guhck, edts , (Cambridge, UK : Basil Blackwell, 1991).
RispondiEliminaSearle starts by explaining his view on the concept of Background to make intentional states function: "The main thesis of that chapter is that intentional states only function, they only determine their conditions of satisfaction, given a pre-intentional or non-intentional Background of abilities and capacities..." and he does so to initially try to take away five critical points on his work raised by Stroud, which he considers to be made on a basis of misconception, rather than a flawed reasoning on his part. He, most importantly, claims that "I could have all of my Background abilities even if he I am radically mistaken about how the world is; and in that sense my Background abilities are independent of how things are in fact in the world that I represent to myself with my intentionality," Background is not itself a feature of the world independent of the mind. Although Searle admits that there can be regress arguments for the Background, but he also states that the way that Stroud presents his critique it is incomplete because you can counter argue that 'the representation just includes its own grasping' but Searle himself would like to go even further to tackle this by stating that rules themselves are subject to further interpretation. The last point that Stroud raises is the statement that Searle contradicts his own theory by stating "On the one hand, we lapse into intentionalistic vocabulary because we are looking for an explanation that will make the phenomena intelligible to us in that intentional way; but since the 'Background' is also something that is supposed to explain how any intentional states are possible we see that it cannot be made up of intentional states in turn". Although this is quite fundamental critique, Searle tries to counter this by starting to state that his words were misunderstood. He assumes that Stroud thinks that when Searle is talking about a "commitment to realism", he actually refers to a commitment to the "truth [...] " even though this is not at all what Searle means. Searle's idea is not that by acting, for example skiing or drinking beer "I somehow imply that I hold a commitment to the truth of a certain proposition: namely, that the real world exists. Rather, I am suggesting any “commitment” is simply constituted by the way I behave. There need not be anything else.". Personally I really appreciate this approach to intentionality because it respects the subtleness of non-deliberate and unintentional.